Please Tell me if this idea for an indoor Enclosure will work?

CarolM

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Hi,

I have come up with an idea on how to make an Indoor Enclosure, however please can someone advise if the materials I want to use will work.

My house is not very big, but I have a space that is next to a wall which creates a corner. So the thought process is to build an enclosure that will go around the corner, thereby reducing the space used in the room but still making it spacious enough for Baby to have fun.

I want to use Posts to create the frame, and masonite wood for the walls. However on the inside to make it waterproof, I want to line the whole enclosure with vynil. As masonite is obviously not a very water proof wood. It is however a cheaper wood, so will at the end of the day cost me less to make the enclosure. The front part of the enclosure will have glass inserted into the masonite and sealed with silicone. And all the joinings will also be sealed with silicone.

I have attached two drawings to give you an idea of what I am talking about.

The measurements should be as follows:

Length 1.3m = 4.26Ft
Width 0.61m = 2.00Ft
Height 0.75m = 2.46Ft

Will this work or must I use plywood?
Enclosure.jpg Enclosure with doors and windows in front..jpg
 

Sterant

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Carol - That should work fine. Its enough space. utilizing that corner is going to make things a little more difficult, but if that's the best use of your space, then go for it. I've never tried masonite so I can't tell you how it will hold up, but I have used painted and silicon sealed plywood, and that works great. Are you planning to run this as a humid enclosed chamber or just the natural humidity of your home?
 

CarolM

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It will be a humid enclosed chamber. Our home is not humide enough. Humidity is probably only about 40%. So will need to create a 80% environment.
 

Markw84

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I think Masonite would not be a good idea. Once moisture gets to it, it swells and loses strength, and deteriorates rapidly. There is a tempered Masonite that is made to be moisture resistant. It is made for exterior applications. That is the only Masonite I would consider. I have always used exterior grade plywood.
 

CarolM

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I think Masonite would not be a good idea. Once moisture gets to it, it swells and loses strength, and deteriorates rapidly. There is a tempered Masonite that is made to be moisture resistant. It is made for exterior applications. That is the only Masonite I would consider. I have always used exterior grade plywood.
Okay. I was going to line it with vynil on the inside. However I see that the danger will be if I miss a spot then moisture will still get into the masonite. I will look and see if I can find the tempered masonite and do a price comparison against plywood. Thank you
 

CarolM

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Carol - That should work fine. Its enough space. utilizing that corner is going to make things a little more difficult, but if that's the best use of your space, then go for it. I've never tried masonite so I can't tell you how it will hold up, but I have used painted and silicon sealed plywood, and that works great. Are you planning to run this as a humid enclosed chamber or just the natural humidity of your home?
Hi Dan, I saw in an email that you asked why I don't go for a straight rectangle instead of working with the corner, but I don't see it here. Anyway, the reason would be the following,
I have to get this past my husband, and if I have a rectangular shape it will encroach into the space of the lounge and my husband will not be happy. So in order to still be able to give a decent square meterage I thought I could use the corner and take the enclosure around it. I also thought it would make it interesting for baby as well. If it looks pleasing then my husband cannot complain. if it sticks out like a sore thumb, it will end up being a bone of contention always.
As I have an egg incubating (I am trying not to count my eggs before they have hatched) however also trying to plan ahead. If the egg does hatch then I can also then put a partition at the point of the corner and seperate the two, as I cannot keep them together.
Yes lighting will be difficult, it means that I would have to have light on each side.
Doors I am planning on putting on both sides. So the one side will have access doors in the front and the same for the other side.
This is a work in progress, and I am not even sure if I will be able to do it yet, I may have to save for a little while before I can do it.
But I am just trying to get my ducks in a row (or I should say torts in a row) so that when I do it then I have already ironed out all the kinks etc. and can just go ahead and build it. I have never built something like this, so hopefully it will look nice once I am done. We will have to see.
 

Sterant

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Carol - Sorry......that message was sent in error as I wrote it before I thoroughly read your initial post....so I deleted it! After reading your post I noticed you had a space constraint and the corner was your only option. It will work just fine. Have fun with the build - I really enjoy making these boxes - just finished a big one last night which I made out of plywood.
 

CarolM

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Carol - Sorry......that message was sent in error as I wrote it before I thoroughly read your initial post....so I deleted it! After reading your post I noticed you had a space constraint and the corner was your only option. It will work just fine. Have fun with the build - I really enjoy making these boxes - just finished a big one last night which I made out of plywood.
I am quite nervous about it actually, as I have never built anything like this before. Or built anything else for that matter, so doing a costing on it, it works out to be quite alot and I would like something that will look nice, especially if I am going to spend that amount of cash on it. I would love to see pics of yours, if you are willing to share.
 

Sterant

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Don't be nervous, they aren't difficult. I have included a few pictures of the latest one I built. I don't have the doors on it yet - I will probably do simple double pane glass in wooden frames. Obviously no substrate or anything inside yet.

For a little background - This will house animals that are new to me, so rather than set them up in my primary tortoise room, I am keeping them quarantined in my shop for at least a year. My shop is kept at 55 degrees F in the winter and naturally gets up in the mid 80's (or whatever temperature it is outside) in the summer. During Winter, I keep the enclosure at 87 during the day and let it drop to 55 at night. Because the room is heated, I can get away with the thin reflective insulation wrap you see on the top, back and sides. If you were building one of these for outdoors, then I would look at Tom's thread on Night Boxes and sandwich rigid foam insulation between two pieces of plywood. That works great.

You can see I have painted and sealed the entire inside so I can run it humid if I want, but for my current use, it will run at ambient RH.

I used 4"X 4" legs and 2" X 6" framing for the rolling base you see painted dark grey. I like having them on wheels so I can move them around the shop in different seasons (following the sun). I am housing adult females, so I have 3 nesting boxes full of dirt - being on wheels allows me to roll the whole thing outside for cleaning. Due to the fact that I am using a soil / sand regolith, there will be a couple hundred pounds of substrate - which is why its built so robust.

The main box is 3/4" Grade A plywood. Grade A is the stuff thats basically ready to paint. The framing is 2" X 3" pine. The overall dimensions are 4' X 8' and it is 36" high. 24" high is fine (and more efficient to heat) , but I like extra working space inside. This particular one has 2 100watt CHE's being controlled by a Herpstat proportional controller for the heat, A 250w basking lamp, and 2 light fixtures for UVB. Each of those fixtures holds 4 4' T5HO bulbs. I only run 1 UVB bulb in each fixture - the other bulbs are 6500K grow lights. This provides the amount of UVB I want as measured with a Solarmeter 6.5 UVI meter.

Hopefully this provides you with some useful ideas. Look around at the forum section on enclosures as there are a lot of great designs that others have made for their specific needs.

Enjoy!


enclosure front.JPGenclosure tubs.JPGenclosure inside wiring.JPGenclosure cool side.JPGenclosure control side.JPG
 

CarolM

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Don't be nervous, they aren't difficult. I have included a few pictures of the latest one I built. I don't have the doors on it yet - I will probably do simple double pane glass in wooden frames. Obviously no substrate or anything inside yet.

For a little background - This will house animals that are new to me, so rather than set them up in my primary tortoise room, I am keeping them quarantined in my shop for at least a year. My shop is kept at 55 degrees F in the winter and naturally gets up in the mid 80's (or whatever temperature it is outside) in the summer. During Winter, I keep the enclosure at 87 during the day and let it drop to 55 at night. Because the room is heated, I can get away with the thin reflective insulation wrap you see on the top, back and sides. If you were building one of these for outdoors, then I would look at Tom's thread on Night Boxes and sandwich rigid foam insulation between two pieces of plywood. That works great.

You can see I have painted and sealed the entire inside so I can run it humid if I want, but for my current use, it will run at ambient RH.

I used 4"X 4" legs and 2" X 6" framing for the rolling base you see painted dark grey. I like having them on wheels so I can move them around the shop in different seasons (following the sun). I am housing adult females, so I have 3 nesting boxes full of dirt - being on wheels allows me to roll the whole thing outside for cleaning. Due to the fact that I am using a soil / sand regolith, there will be a couple hundred pounds of substrate - which is why its built so robust.

The main box is 3/4" Grade A plywood. Grade A is the stuff thats basically ready to paint. The framing is 2" X 3" pine. The overall dimensions are 4' X 8' and it is 36" high. 24" high is fine (and more efficient to heat) , but I like extra working space inside. This particular one has 2 100watt CHE's being controlled by a Herpstat proportional controller for the heat, A 250w basking lamp, and 2 light fixtures for UVB. Each of those fixtures holds 4 4' T5HO bulbs. I only run 1 UVB bulb in each fixture - the other bulbs are 6500K grow lights. This provides the amount of UVB I want as measured with a Solarmeter 6.5 UVI meter.

Hopefully this provides you with some useful ideas. Look around at the forum section on enclosures as there are a lot of great designs that others have made for their specific needs.

Enjoy!


View attachment 225165View attachment 225167View attachment 225166View attachment 225164View attachment 225163
It looks awesome. If it is for the torts that I think it is for I would be interested to see how yours will burrow. Are you going to put lots of plants in?
 

Sterant

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Hi Carol. Yes - I am planning to plant it fairly heavily. I will send more pictures once the doors are done and it is planted.
 

Markw84

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Don't be nervous, they aren't difficult. I have included a few pictures of the latest one I built. I don't have the doors on it yet - I will probably do simple double pane glass in wooden frames. Obviously no substrate or anything inside yet.

For a little background - This will house animals that are new to me, so rather than set them up in my primary tortoise room, I am keeping them quarantined in my shop for at least a year. My shop is kept at 55 degrees F in the winter and naturally gets up in the mid 80's (or whatever temperature it is outside) in the summer. During Winter, I keep the enclosure at 87 during the day and let it drop to 55 at night. Because the room is heated, I can get away with the thin reflective insulation wrap you see on the top, back and sides. If you were building one of these for outdoors, then I would look at Tom's thread on Night Boxes and sandwich rigid foam insulation between two pieces of plywood. That works great.

You can see I have painted and sealed the entire inside so I can run it humid if I want, but for my current use, it will run at ambient RH.

I used 4"X 4" legs and 2" X 6" framing for the rolling base you see painted dark grey. I like having them on wheels so I can move them around the shop in different seasons (following the sun). I am housing adult females, so I have 3 nesting boxes full of dirt - being on wheels allows me to roll the whole thing outside for cleaning. Due to the fact that I am using a soil / sand regolith, there will be a couple hundred pounds of substrate - which is why its built so robust.

The main box is 3/4" Grade A plywood. Grade A is the stuff thats basically ready to paint. The framing is 2" X 3" pine. The overall dimensions are 4' X 8' and it is 36" high. 24" high is fine (and more efficient to heat) , but I like extra working space inside. This particular one has 2 100watt CHE's being controlled by a Herpstat proportional controller for the heat, A 250w basking lamp, and 2 light fixtures for UVB. Each of those fixtures holds 4 4' T5HO bulbs. I only run 1 UVB bulb in each fixture - the other bulbs are 6500K grow lights. This provides the amount of UVB I want as measured with a Solarmeter 6.5 UVI meter.

Hopefully this provides you with some useful ideas. Look around at the forum section on enclosures as there are a lot of great designs that others have made for their specific needs.

Enjoy!


View attachment 225165View attachment 225167View attachment 225166View attachment 225164View attachment 225163
Dan:

Love your enclosure! Thank you for sharing this. Some things I see I want to incorporate in my current build...

With such a nice total area devoted to nesting, why have you gone with three nesting tubs instead of just putting in a full 8"-10" layer of substrate throughout? I am suspecting experience has taught you something here?
 

Sterant

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Dan:

Love your enclosure! Thank you for sharing this. Some things I see I want to incorporate in my current build...

With such a nice total area devoted to nesting, why have you gone with three nesting tubs instead of just putting in a full 8"-10" layer of substrate throughout? I am suspecting experience has taught you something here?

Thanks Mark ! Good question, and I went back and forth a million times. It generally comes from the fact that though using dirt as a substrate allows for much more interesting enclosures with plants and rocks etc (over a tub with mulch), dirt, in your house, can become a dusty mess in a short period of time. I don't use dirt anymore in any of my tortoise room enclosures because the mess is too much to handle.....its so dusty and it covers the entire room. Because of this, I like to use as little dirt as possible but still get the nesting and planting areas I want. In addition, this enclosure is 4 feet deep - which is too deep to work towards the back. Cutting the tub holes allows me to crawl underneath and stand up inside the enclosure while I am working on it. In the event I need to get inside the enclosure after it is all setup, I can simply brush the dirt away from one of the tubs and lift it out. This enclosure is in my shop, so I can roll the whole thing outside for cleaning which makes the whole dirt-thing more manageable. (I can also load a pallet of topsoil with my pallet jack).

Making the whole thing deeper and filling the whole thing with dirt would certainly work. Just a bit more mess when it comes time to clean it.

All that being said - it still took 24 bags of top-soil to fill the thing. If I didn't use the tubs, it would have been more like 40 bags.

The other fun part was finding bags of top soil this time of year, and of course they were all outside and frozen solid. Had to thaw them. so much work for dirt!
 

Markw84

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Thanks Mark ! Good question, and I went back and forth a million times. It generally comes from the fact that though using dirt as a substrate allows for much more interesting enclosures with plants and rocks etc (over a tub with mulch), dirt, in your house, can become a dusty mess in a short period of time. I don't use dirt anymore in any of my tortoise room enclosures because the mess is too much to handle.....its so dusty and it covers the entire room. Because of this, I like to use as little dirt as possible but still get the nesting and planting areas I want. In addition, this enclosure is 4 feet deep - which is too deep to work towards the back. Cutting the tub holes allows me to crawl underneath and stand up inside the enclosure while I am working on it. In the event I need to get inside the enclosure after it is all setup, I can simply brush the dirt away from one of the tubs and lift it out. This enclosure is in my shop, so I can roll the whole thing outside for cleaning which makes the whole dirt-thing more manageable. (I can also load a pallet of topsoil with my pallet jack).

Making the whole thing deeper and filling the whole thing with dirt would certainly work. Just a bit more mess when it comes time to clean it.

All that being said - it still took 24 bags of top-soil to fill the thing. If I didn't use the tubs, it would have been more like 40 bags.

The other fun part was finding bags of top soil this time of year, and of course they were all outside and frozen solid. Had to thaw them. so much work for dirt!

Great info and insight

For nesting area do you use straight topsoil? Mix in anything?

Do you do anything to encourage they start digging in the tub area?

I’ve never used indoor nesting but with my Burmese laying in winter I now need to explore it

Thank you for sharing
 

Sterant

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This time I used 1 bag of play sand to every 10 bags of top soil. I used to do this a lot for leopards nesting indoors, and the topsoil can pack down so hard that its like concrete. the sand helps keep it loose.

You will notice that the nesting tubs take up most of the enclosure....but, of course, they will try to nest in the 3" frame around the tubs ! I tend to put big rocks in the areas where I don't want them to nest, and I also use plantings that way to an extent. If you have a species that like to nest near something, like a plant, you can put them in the corners of the tubs, thereby drawing them to the tub to nest. With so much area covered by tub, even if they bail on a nest or two, they eventually use the tubs. With the leopards, I used to put mulch everywhere except the tubs, and they would always use the tub.

I actually had a radiated female nest in 12" of cypress mulch a couple weeks ago which was a first for me.

I will send more picture of this new enclosure once it is planted and has doors (and tortoises).
 

CarolM

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This time I used 1 bag of play sand to every 10 bags of top soil. I used to do this a lot for leopards nesting indoors, and the topsoil can pack down so hard that its like concrete. the sand helps keep it loose.

You will notice that the nesting tubs take up most of the enclosure....but, of course, they will try to nest in the 3" frame around the tubs ! I tend to put big rocks in the areas where I don't want them to nest, and I also use plantings that way to an extent. If you have a species that like to nest near something, like a plant, you can put them in the corners of the tubs, thereby drawing them to the tub to nest. With so much area covered by tub, even if they bail on a nest or two, they eventually use the tubs. With the leopards, I used to put mulch everywhere except the tubs, and they would always use the tub.

I actually had a radiated female nest in 12" of cypress mulch a couple weeks ago which was a first for me.

I will send more picture of this new enclosure once it is planted and has doors (and tortoises).
So you can use top soil in your enclosure? I am using coco peat. Can I then mix the coco peat with organic top soil as well?
 

Sterant

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So you can use top soil in your enclosure? I am using coco peat. Can I then mix the coco peat with organic top soil as well?
Well mine are adults so I don't have the humidity concerns you do. I don't see a problem with mixing coco into some good, clean topsoil of a known source. I've never mixed anything with the coco in my hatchling enclosures - perhaps others that have can give some suggestions. When top soil drys out it gets very dusty - which is bad in the house, but since you will be keeping it very moist, that shouldn't be a concern.
 

CarolM

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Well mine are adults so I don't have the humidity concerns you do. I don't see a problem with mixing coco into some good, clean topsoil of a known source. I've never mixed anything with the coco in my hatchling enclosures - perhaps others that have can give some suggestions. When top soil drys out it gets very dusty - which is bad in the house, but since you will be keeping it very moist, that shouldn't be a concern.
Okay noted. But I think then that I will stick to the coco peat alone, rather be safe than sorry....
 

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